Tubular Android Superheroes

by Mel Gilden

  Bill swished fries in catsup and gave them to me one at a time. They were good too. While I ate I looked around, just enjoying the atmosphere. What I saw out the window made me stop chewing.

  On the side of the restaurant away from the parking lot and the gas station was another wrecking yard like many others I'd seen that day, but full of display signs instead of automobiles. From where I sat I couldn't see much but a row of big white buckets-o'-chicken, like a row of grounded water towers.

  Without hurry I finished the burger and fries, paid my check, and walked out of the restaurant. As I touched the door Mabel suggested I have a nice day. My chances of following her advice had just improved. Bill and I walked around the restaurant on the street side and went just far enough so that I could see the big sign yard.

  Doughnuts like airplane wheels sat on the ground near a bunch of monster spear points that I finally figured out were ice-cream cones. Lined up in rows like slices of toast were neon signs, square blocks of plastic, painted wooden planks, signs advertising grocery stores and gas stations. They were too big to be sitting on the ground. Like the gas station designed for use by trucks, the sign yard did not look quite real.

  A sign that looked more normal because it was raised on a big metal stand stood at the gate. It said sign of the times sign cemetery. To Bill I said, "Recognize it?"

  "Sure, Boss."

  Sure. We had seen a photograph of it at Willville on the wall-sized montage of all the pretty things Will Industries owned. And just to ease away any doubts that this was the place I was looking for, an ID Advertising truck was parked in the Sign of the Times lot. A bumper sticker was on the back bumper. I couldn't read it from where I stood, but I was willing to bet it said stop truck stop. Mabel or her employees had been busy.

  In my brain I spread out a map of Los Angeles County, sat down with myself, and began to figure. I'd waited about an hour for ID Advertising truck number eighty-two to return to the storage yard in Pasadena. I thought it had gone to Willville from the Convention Center and then to the yard. The truck would have taken about the same amount of time to go from the Convention Center to the Sign of the Times Sign Cemetery and then home.

  I was starting to believe that Zamp and the surfers were around here someplace. In the lab. I shuddered and thought about all the hours till ten-thirty the next morning.

  Across the street from the sign yard were six shabby buildings the color of a sick person's tongue, seemingly huddled together for comfort. The ensemble was called the Shady Pines Motel, but the only pine around was a single specimen in front of the office. It was made from cement and was faded and not very convincing. It had probably not been very convincing when new. Hanging below the motel sign was another that said vacancy.

  I drove the Belvedere into the lot of the Shady Pines Motel and entered the office. I talked to a large woman who had no chin but a cloud of hair that was so blond it was almost yellow. It looked as natural as the pine tree out front. She took enough money for two nights and gave me a key. It didn't bother her that I had no luggage, and she didn't charge me for Bill. I moved the car back to the space in front of number twenty-eight.

  The room was clean and plain and had all the personality of a plastic spoon. While Bill made patterns on the sink with the tiny bars of soap he'd found, I sat on the edge of the bed feeling the rough nap of the coverlet with my fingers and thinking about the lab and the list on Mr. Will's desk. I thought about Zamp and the surfers and all the unpleasant experiments that could be done on them. I thought of Irv Doewanit dead on the living-room floor and the things people will do for sentiment. Max Toodemax grinned at me evilly from the window of an empty beach house.

  I decided that what I was doing made as much sense as what Bill was doing. I sat by the window and watched the Sign of the Times Sign Cemetery. After a while the ID Advertising truck left. The sun went down and when the yard was just a gray uncertainty, it was suddenly filled with hard white light that splashed from tall metal poles. In the spaces between traffic I could hear the lamps buzzing.

  I sat in my dark room and started to imagine large, many-armed insects crawling out from behind the disused signs across the street. When one of them waved at me, I went to bed.

  Chapter 23

  Burning Daylight

  I SLEPT without dreaming and the next morning felt as if I'd gotten the good night's sleep I'd paid for. I washed and dressed and took Bill across the street to the Stop Truck Stop, where I ordered the Trucker's Breakfast, a not very subtle combination of eggs, meat, pancakes, and coffee. It was a lot of food, but I ate it all. I didn't know when I would eat again.

  It was a quarter to ten. Something would begin at the lab in forty-five minutes. Despite the figuring I'd done with my mental map the previous afternoon it suddenly seemed like a real long shot that the event would happen anywhere near here. The time element may have had nothing to do with where the truck had been. This hot stretch of truck-distressed road was not a neighborhood for laboratories, except the kind that screams came from in the middle of the night. I thought that and immediately wished I hadn't.

  All I had was the long shot. I could take it or go back to Malibu and sit by the phone. I took it.

  "Come on. Bill," I said. "We're burning daylight."

  We walked in at the open gate of the Sign of the Times Sign Cemetery and drifted across the lot. Parked in it now were Darken Stormy's red sports car and three long black limousines, as cold and businesslike as loaded pistols. I whistled at them. Sometimes the long shots pay off. I figured I was past due.

  In the center of the lot was an office, a wooden box made of mismatched boards that had not been painted lately. I went in and let the door slap shut behind me. At the back of the office was another closed door. Over it on a shelf was a TV, turned low but showing a quiz show.

  On one wall was a small desk under a calendar featuring an improbable young woman wearing a smile and a pair of very clean bib overalls that were very short at the bottom and fell open at the top. She was holding a wrench and leaning over a car engine as if to fix it. She'd have lots of help.

  On the desk were two wire baskets, both filled with stiff yellowing papers. One stack was weighted by a big metal gear. The blotter was marked with cigarette burns and gouges.

  Along the other wall, under a window so dirty it hardly deserved the name, was a long wooden workbench. Tools hung from a rack and others were strewn out along the bench. In the center of some open work space, along with a plastic bottle of glue and a few squares of sandpaper, was the "Surf City" music box, the tip of the blue wooden wave missing.

  Watching me from a wooden chair that had only one arm was Danny, Darken Stormy's boyfriend. His coverall had grease down its front as if that was where he wiped his hands. On his chest was a plastic bar that said danny macabre.

  I listened to the TV murmuring for a moment and then a little contemptuously said, "This doesn't look like the kind of business Will Industries would get involved in." I didn't drag a white glove across his desk, but hoped my tone suggested it was only a matter of time.

  Instead of answering me Danny stood up and said, "Can I help you?" as if helping me was not his fondest wish. He was a big guy, but his voice had no more substance than a Saltine.

  I said, "I'm here for the meeting in the lab."

  He sat down in the chair and rocked, making bad music with the springs, and picked up a clipboard from his desk. "Name?" he said.

  "Em Shannon." Mr. Shannon ran a computer software company. His name had been on the list.

  Danny threw down the clipboard and said, "I don't know what your game is, mister, but you aren't Em Shannon or anybody else on this list. They're all already down at the meeting." He laughed. "Besides, you're not dressed for the gig. Besides, Mr. Will doesn't like bots." "What does Darken Stormy think of them?" "Who's Darken Stormy?" he said without interest. But he was rocking fast now.

  "You should have said, 'What's a Darken Stormy?' It would have been more convincing
."

  He puckered his lips and glanced at the workbench. If I hadn't known how important the music box was, the gesture would have seemed meaningless. He said, "She isn't here."

  "Then somebody else must be driving her car."

  Danny decided something and then said slowly, "Is there a joke here someplace?"

  "If there is, it's on you and Darken." I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten. I needed answers fast. Danny frowned and I demanded, "Where's that meeting?"

  "What meeting?"

  "The meeting that everybody is already at."

  "Nix," he said, and shook his head.

  "Oh, gangster stuff, huh? Has Darken told you how involved she is with the scragging of Irv Doewanit?"

  His eyes got big and wild. He leaned forward and his feet dropped flat on the floor. "No," he said, barely making sound.

  "I found him dead on my living-room floor. He had the missing piece of that music box in his hand."

  "So?"

  I shook my head. "Not smart, Danny. Nobody in the world but Darken would want that music box bad enough to kill for it. She knows that. We've already discussed it. She thought she was safe because I wasn't able to find the music box at her condo."

  He glanced at the music box again. This time he knew I knew what the glance meant. He said, "Why should I care about her?"

  "Not smart again. Pictures of you and her together are all over her house. There's the music box. A case can be made that you're pretty chummy."

  "Things disappear."

  Bluffing, I said, "I don't really need the box itself. I have witnesses who saw Darken ask for the box and other witnesses who know what it means to her." I didn't tell him that my witnesses were what I was looking for, and that if he smartened up I would have nothing better to do than go home and clip coupons.

  "All right," he said.

  "Don't look so glum. Darken doesn't have to swing for the murder. It's possible she didn't even order Doewanit killed, but the person she sent for the music box got a little overenthusiastic. You'll need help proving it, though. Personally, I can go either way." I snapped my fingers and said, "You didn't ice Irv, did you?"

  He looked so genuinely shocked that I thought his surprise must be real. He said, "How much?" "Is money all you can think about? Where is that meeting being held?"

  He watched a fly buzz on the dirty window, while sitting so still the chair didn't make a noise. He looked at me and put his tongue out to one side between his teeth. He made as nice a variety of thoughtful gestures as I'd ever seen. Probably he'd learned them in acting school.

  After running through the repertoire twice he stood up, but despite his bulk was no more threatening than a Saint Bernard. From a corner he grabbed a flashlight the size of a celery stalk and said, "Come on." He pushed past me and Bill out the door.

  Outside, heat was gathering like evil spirits. We made a parade through it past the limousines and the red sports car and into the aisles of old signs. Danny threaded us among an alphabet of letters in different styles and colors. Just sitting there on the ground, they towered above us as if we were ants on a model train layout. He took us down a row of big orange balls, yellow seashells, and red horses with wings. At the end were a few rectangular plastic slabs; through the cracked-out places I could see fluorescent tubes.

  Near the back fence, signs lay in dusty stacks, forgotten as the businesses they once fronted. Danny Macabre found what he was looking for between one of the stacks and a big neon hamburger with most of its tubes gone. Lying flat on the ground was a weathered wooden sign, no more than a collection of splinters waiting for a careless finger. The ghost of paint that remained on it said bonanza feed and grain.

  He looked around, but there was nothing to see except old signs. We were protected on all sides. As if from far away came the sound of trucks rolling by on the street. The smell from the truck stop was a heavy blanket that closed in on us as surely as did the old signs.

  "I'll get in trouble," Danny Macabre said, his voice no thicker than a piece of paper.

  "You're in trouble now," I said, and tried to make it stick. "But your trouble is a stroll in the park compared to the fix Darken Stormy is in."

  Danny handed me the flashlight, then leaned down and grabbed a metal handle that was much newer than the sign. He used body English to heave the sign upward. It opened easily like the door on the storm shelter in The Wizard of Oz and stuck out like a wing. Below it was a flight of cement stairs that led into the ground.

  "I'll be lucky if Mr. Will just fires me." He was breathing hard.

  In all that heat something blew across my back and made me shiver. Trying to sound gruff, I said, "You'll never know till you try. Let's get to it."

  Chapter 24

  Come As You Are

  DANNY Macabre took back the flashlight and led the way down the steps. Bill went next. I came last so that I could watch everybody. I trusted Bill, but he was easily distracted. I trusted Danny no more than I'd trust any cornered animal.

  The steps went down one flight or so and we were at the end of a long, crooked tunnel held in place by square wooden rafters and supports. The beam of the flashlight pointed things out like a bony finger. On the dusty floor a few tracks led off into the dimness then back out again. As far as I could tell all the tracks had been made by the same pair of shoes.

  "Not much business," I said. "There must be a VIP entrance somewhere else."

  Danny's voice shook a little when he said, "We wouldn't have a chance at the front door. Nobody watches this way." He smiled without heat. "Nobody else knows about it. Not even Mr. Will. Back in the fifties this was some kind of Civil Defense project. I found it while moving stuff around out here one day."

  "Civil Defense?" I said.

  "You know. The Rooskies were gonna bomb us back to the Stone Age." He watched my face. Like his, I suppose it looked a little gray in the feeble light coming from above. "Or maybe you don't know."

  "Don't get too clever with the guessing," I said. "Let's go." After a few steps I told Bill to turn on his eyelights. Between Bill's eyes and Danny Macabre's flash we could see everything there was to see, which wasn't much.

  The tunnel went on for a while. The air down here was cool and smelled of damp dead things. In a few places water oozed out of the wall. We came to a dead end against which yellow cans were stacked. Each of them said something like creamed corn or roast beef hash on it in red block letters above a triangle containing the letters cd. A few of the cans were open and empty and stacked neatly against a side wall.

  Across from the empty cans was a dark doorway crossed by rough boards hung with a sheer curtain of spider silk.

  "Careful where you put your hands and feet," Danny said, and climbed carefully around the boards.

  Bill climbed through eagerly, and I followed as if the boards were electrified. We stood in another tunnel, this one much narrower and dirtier. In this dank place the artificial light we carried seemed as bright as sunlight. It made shadows that danced and quivered across the walls and floor. Bill looked around, showing us that the walls were widely spaced wooden planks, and that the occasional braces thrust out at odd angles, all but blocking our path. Small things moved in the emptiness beyond the light. If it had been more cramped the tunnel could have been a California basement.

  As we moved along slowly I whispered to Bill, "Anything about this place in your bubble memory?"

  "Sorry, Boss."

  We kept walking. I saw the tails of departing rats—which is the way I like them—and nests of nightmare insects. Far away I heard howling which I liked to think was wind.

  When we came to a wall that had slits of light around what was apparently a narrow door, Danny turned off his light and asked Bill to do the same. I repeated Danny's order for Bill's benefit. The darkness leapt in at us. I stood very still, sniffing the wood and the damp and the small nasty creatures, and listening to the howling. I could hear the creak of Danny's shoe leather and the breathing of two people. T
hen I heard the rumble of conversation and running water. Somebody flushed a toilet just past my left shoulder.

  "Look here," Danny said. Danny's pointing hand was silhouetted in a gray oblong framed by the bright slits. As my eyes grew used to the darkness I began to see something on the oblong. I blinked and suddenly what I saw was not on the oblong but on the other side of it. "Oneway glass," said Danny, proud as if he'd invented it.

  Beyond the glass was a wide green aisle with narrow metal cabinets on each side—lockers, I thought. A couple of large old naked men were drying themselves with towels, each with a foot raised onto a yellow bench that ran down the center of the aisle. More water came on. It sounded like a shower.

  "Civil Defense?" I whispered.

  "If you have a better idea, mister, I'd like to hear it."

  After a while the two naked men got dressed and went away. Other naked men walked by but none of them stopped in our aisle. Danny jiggled a catch and pushed open the glass, which was hung on hinges like a door. We tumbled out quickly and he pushed a mirror closed behind us. The room was warm and humid and smelled like the chlorine Whipper Will used to keep his yoyogurt equipment clean. The green stuff on the floor was artificial grass.

  A few aisles away a loud male voice said, "I'm his manager. I'm gonna get him a fight with a guy in a wheelchair and who's blind in one eye." Somebody else laughed and said, "Reuben's bullshit." That drew more laughter. In the shower room somebody began to sing in a goofy voice, "Sing to me! The song I've been waiting to hear!" in a key of his own invention.

  I prodded Danny and said, "Are we going to stay for the next show, or do we keep moving?"

  "Yeah," he said. He led us to another aisle. A geek wearing glasses and a single black sock was sitting on a yellow bench. He looked at us, got embarrassed, then went back to picking at the toes of his naked foot.

  Danny took us into an aisle where nobody was changing and fiddled with a combination lock. "My lock," he said as he pulled open the door. Inside was a stairway the width of the locker. Danny went in, then Bill, then me. I pulled the door closed behind us. Danny hung his lock from the inside handle and pushed it closed until it clicked.